Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Russia

  • RELIGION

    Best of 2022: Pope Francis in war and peace

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 05 January 2023

    Even as he sustains the papacy’s now traditional opposition to all forms of war and its emphasis on the extreme suffering war brings, especially to the innocent, Pope Francis has, in recent weeks, taken a different, more partisan approach which he and others must feel is justified.

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Russia sanctions reveal growing split in the global financial system

    • David James
    • 14 December 2022

    What the failed attempt to crush Russia’s economy has revealed is that America’s and Europe’s dominance of the global financial system is something of an illusion; more like money changing hands in a giant casino rather than actual wealth. 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Patterns of war and peace

    • Barry Gittins
    • 13 October 2022

    Why is it that we so often don’t learn from the last war’s mistakes? Time and again, humans are drawn into patterns of behaviour that echo those of the past, and that lead once again to armed conflict. It's too easy to shy away from examining the moral failure that is war. When we eulogise the fallen, do we forget why they were butchered in the first place?

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Blowback to Russia sanctions in Europe as gas crisis looms

    • David James
    • 03 October 2022
    5 Comments

    For Europe, especially Germany, there should be enough gas in storage to limp through winter but by next spring there may be severe trouble. The leaders of Europe and the United States expected that they would win the economic war against Russia and force the invader to withdraw. Not only did that not happen, it is likely to lead to severe unintended economic consequences.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Pacifism and Putin

    • John D’Arcy May
    • 28 September 2022
    3 Comments

    What can the pacifist do when confronted with naked tyranny? With Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, pacifists are faced with the dilemma of either helping Ukrainians defend themselves ― and what spirit and courage they have shown, led by their unlikely president ― or letting Putin have his way. If diplomacy stood a chance, it would be the alternative option for pacifists; but does it?

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Holy fools and flawed titans: The legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 08 September 2022
    3 Comments

    Greatness for the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, was not to be found at home. Commentary on his passing is as much a statement of positions, endorsed by admiring beneficiaries, and loathed by those who fell off the train of history.  The millions who delighted seeing the collapse of the Soviet Union and, as a result, a power vacuum and weaker Russia, toast him, eyes filled with emotion. 

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Impending catastrophe leads calls to help fight famine

    • Kirsty Robertson
    • 10 August 2022
    2 Comments

    Last month I travelled to Ethiopia, visiting an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp filled with thousands of people facing a hunger crisis. The triple threats of conflict, COVID and climate have created the perfect storm, with serious impacts on countries that depend heavily on grain, fuel and fertiliser imports from Russia or Ukraine, including Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan.  

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    War, truth and Christianity

    • Peter Vardy
    • 21 July 2022
    5 Comments

    Pope Francis recognised that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was ‘perhaps somehow provoked’ and said he was warned before the war that Nato was ‘barking at the gates of Russia’. In an interview with the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica the Pope condemned the ‘ferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops’ but warned against a fairy tale perception of the conflict as good versus evil.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    In the name of Kyrill

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 May 2022
    7 Comments

    Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow has received much justified criticism for aligning his Church alongside Vladimir Putin in the invasion of Ukraine. If we are to understand how he could think it is right to do so, however, it is helpful to know how he came to be Kyrill. The story of his earlier namesakes illuminate the conduct of the present Patriarch of Moscow. 

    READ MORE
  • ECONOMICS

    Can financial fictions survive reality?

    • David James
    • 31 May 2022
    2 Comments

    As commodity prices and inflation soar in the ‘real’ world we may be witnessing a prelude to another 2008-style crisis triggered by the foreign exchange markets. The risks certainly look similar and can be described with a simple question. Can the fictions produced by out-of-control financial actors survive reality? 

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The pity of war

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 26 May 2022
    14 Comments

    In the photo I have just seen Vadim Shishimarin is in the dock, hanging his head. He is 21, but looks about 15 as he stands there in the polycarbonate box, the first Russian soldier to be charged and tried in Ukraine for a war crime. He holds the rank of sergeant and was a tank commander. At 21? (I’m embarrassed to recall how immature I was at 21.) It is likely he has a mother: I wonder how she is feeling right now, but think I can make a good guess.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Stalin’s patriarchate

    • Stephen Minas
    • 23 May 2022
    3 Comments

    ‘We removed him from the mausoleum’, wrote the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. ‘But how do we remove Stalin from Stalin’s heirs?’ The poem was published in 1962 but it’s still a good question. Today one of Stalin’s heirs commands a barbaric war against Ukraine with the enthusiastic cheerleading of another such heir – the leader of the Moscow Patriarchate reestablished by Stalin.

    READ MORE